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=========================NEWS UTC=============== SPECIAL REPORT (1)========


            THE MEETING WITH NANCY ADAMSON AND ELIZABETH PATERSON
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Dear Netter:

This is a brief report of the recent meeting with Nancy Adamson, the sexual

harrassment officer of UT, and Elizabeth Paterson, the director of ISC at UT

about the issue of "sexual harrassment" "among Chinese students".   A more

detailed report of this meeting will be posted sooner.
                                                                  NEWS UTC
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When:  Feb.5, 1990,  3:00pm        Where: ISC

Who:   Nancy Adamson, sexual harrassment officer

       Elizabeth Paterson, director of ISC (organizer of the meeting)

       Xunhao Jiang, Chair of CSSA (LYH) at UT

       Anshan Li, representative of CSSA

       About a dozen of Chinese students ( half of them are female students).

What:  About a statement on ISC newsletter (Vol.19, No1) made by Ms. Adamson

       in which Nancy claimed that she saw "a disproportionate amount of peer

       harrassment among Chinese students".
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      At the beginning of the meeting, Nancy explained what her original

intention of the article was. According to a recorded tape, she said:

      1. She received about 4-5 Chinese females who coplained about sexual

harrassments during 1988-1989. This number is very high compared with the

average of Canadian survey. That was why she said so.

      2. She could not identify the nationality of these complaints and

harrassers because in all cases no formal complain was filed. So she can

not tell whether these persons came from Taiwan, Hongkong or PRC. The

harrassers were faculty members, or male students.

      3. In most cases, the victims were threatened (by harrassers) of

losing their visas if they complained. That scared many victims.

      4. She wanted to give helps to Chinese females for protecting them

from such threats. She wanted to tell them that it is absolutely OK for 

victim's visa if she complains.

      5. She did not mean that the Chinese male students were harrassers

or more dangerous. She just concerned about these victims. She regrets

about the "misunderstanding".

      All the male and female Chinese students were angered by her article

and apparently not satisfied by her explaination. We mentioned the following 

points:

      1. In all the cases she mentioned, there were no any evidence to 

indicate or suggest that among us the rate of peer harrassment was "higher" 

than other student groups. The statistic data she posted were wrongly 

manipulated.  We could compare the statement here with Mr. Rushton's

theory (Prof. Rushton published his theory of racial comparison which

was criticized by majority of academic circle).

       2. It was uncreditable that a visa male students threated another visa

female student by the issue of visa. Rather, it sounded like a faculty

member could do so. But the point here was: in all ISC publications, 

"Chinese students" always refered to the visa students from PRC( otherwise,

they used the words like Hongkongness, or Taiwanness).

       3. In fact, the Chinese students at UT had a much better records

in sexual harrassment and the females and males helped each other in

all respects. Even for those who came from Hongkong, they had a good

record as well.

       4. Even if there were some cases that some Chinese females were

harrassed by  Chinese, it was absolutely not acceptable to say that

the whole ethnic group was bad.

       5. It was not a misunderstanding. The information carried by that

article blackened the image of Chinese at UT. It hurted our feeling very

badly and had provoked a widespread protest. It was nonsense to create

new (and many more) victims under the name of protecting female victims.

       Ms. Paterson asked the students to try to understand Nancy's

initiative and called this event was  "regretable". She suggested Nancy

to draft a "clarification" with her and to post on next ISC newsletter.

They promised that no such mistakes would happen again. Nancy and Liz invited

Anshan Li to have a look at the clarification once it is ready.
 
        Next ISC newsletter should be published in next couple of weeks.

Anshan Li is keeping contact with both Liz and Nancy now. If you have

any suggestions, please forward to Anshan Li or to this account.
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